Watch out for that sweet tooth

Small studies are always to be taken with caution, but there’s an interesting one that examines correlations between a child’s sweet tooth and of both that child’s depression and alcoholism in the child’s family.

All the study’s 300 children enjoyed sweets, said the report published in the journal Addiction, but those who reported depression symptoms and those with alcoholism in the immediate family had the strongest yearning for sweetness.

“Because sweet taste and alcohol activate many of the same reward circuits in the brain, the researchers examined the sweet preferences of children with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism,” the study stated. “They also studied the influence of depression, hypothesizing that children with depressive symptoms might have a greater affinity for sweets because sweets make them feel better.”